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Haspel Nomination to Lead CIA Betrays the Message of Christ

Haspel played a central role in a past torture program of the agency. In the early days of the Bush administration, she famously ran a black-site secret prison in Thailand where detainees were tortured with waterboarding and other inhumane abuse. As the torture program began to come under fire by members of Congress and even some members of the Bush administration, Haspel was involved in destroying evidence of about 100 videotapes of the torture, ensuring that there would be no accountability or record of the torture.

President Obama Should Visit Solitary Confinement Cell to See True Suffering

The critique President Obama articulated of solitary confinement in this week’s speech to the NAACP on criminal justice is truly remarkable. Never before has this president, or any president, spoken about the mistreatment of people in U.S. prisons with such clarity and compassion.

When he spoke, the president echoed what people of faith across the country have advocated for years: Solitary confinement is an affront to our deeply held moral convictions.

Directing the attorney general to review solitary confinement is exactly what is needed to begin the process of ending this immoral practice. Faith leaders hope that with Obama’s scheduled visit to the Federal Correctional Institution El Reno in Oklahoma on July 16, he will ask to see the solitary confinement section. If the president misses a chance to see such a unit, he, and thus the nation, will develop an inaccurate picture of the true suffering and neglect that lie deep inside our U.S. prison system.

When the president named solitary confinement as one of those prison conditions "that have no place in any civilized country," he made a statement of values loud and clear — that the inherent human dignity of people does not end at the prison gates.

Torture Report Reveals That Truth Trumps Lies

The release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report detailing the CIA’s brutal post-9/11 torture program is a watershed moment for the values of our nation. The report contains some serious truth-telling. The CIA consistently lied to Congress, the DOJ, White House staff, and the public about its torture program. The torture program’s cruelty was much worse and its effectiveness far less than Congress and the general public were led to believe. The CIA violated a court order by destroying videotapes documenting torture, and used bribes to secure secret sites used for torture in a number of countries. This isn’t an example of our government at its best; it’s an example of how to carry out a cover-up.

The entire rationale for the CIA’s torture program is undercut by the conclusions of this report. In the words of Committee Chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), as she spoke about the report on the floor of the Senate, “Even if one were to set aside all of the moral arguments, coercive interrogation techniques did not produce the vital, otherwise unavailable intelligence the CIA has claimed.” Immoral and illegal, we now know that the program was also ineffective.

A broad array of faith leaders have responded to the Torture Report by condemning the CIA’s torture program. For followers of some faiths, torture violates the image of God; for others, it is an intrinsic evil. People of all faiths, though, hold human life to be sacred, and the long shadow torture casts on the moral integrity of our nation represents a travesty of justice as well as a flagrant violation of human rights. Dr. Roy Medley, General Secretary of American Baptist Churches USA, makes a plea that could almost serve as a benediction to the whole sordid chapter of this history of torture: “May God give us the moral courage to never again betray the core principles that have guided our nation as a leader in the struggle for human rights.”

Now the hard work in Congress begins to ensure that torture never, ever happens in the name of our nation.

CIA Torture Report Ought to Disturb All Our Consciences

Rev. Ron Stief, is executive director of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. Photo courtesy of the Rev. Ron Stief.

At Easter, Christians celebrate Jesus’ rising from the dead. But in light of new revelations of the CIA’s abhorrent acts of torture, it’s the United States that needs resurrection, too.

Details of the CIA’s post-Sept. 11 torture campaign — made worse, if that is possible, by evidence of official deception — are described in key portions of the report on CIA-sponsored torture that the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee voted last week to release.

Though the public has not yet seen the report, current and former U.S. officials who have read it have disclosed information to The Washington Post, Human Rights Watch, and other sources that ought to disturb all of our consciences.